When we sent Steven Messner into Black Desert Online [official site], he came out gushing about the MMORPG… then telling us how to build a production empire. It was not a small game, and it quickly became even bigger only a month after launch. Last week saw the release of the ‘Mediah’ expansion, a huge free update adding the eponymous new region to make the world about 30% larger – with all the new quests, bosses, items, and so on you’d expect from that.

The Mediah expansion’s headline additions are that whole dang new region, “over 1,000″ new quests, a huge boss which publishers Daum Games say “can take on hundreds of players at a time”, 40v40 PvP skirmishes on the Crimson Battlefield, mighty new weapons and armour, and craftable ‘alchemy stones’ to socket weapons. Hit the patch notes if you want to see more, including details on balance tweaks.

I’m never a long-term MMORPG player but I do always enjoy having new lands to explore, and Mediah looks pretty nice:

Black Desert Online has been out in other parts of the world since as early as 2014, remember, so the recent European and North American release is tapping into – and catching up with – those. This wasn’t something they quickly knocked out.